Will MySpace Surpass the Mighty Facebook Platform?

The MySpace platform has long-been a secondary platform for application developers. The primary reason is that most MySpace applications fail to attract as many users as they do on Facebook. Unfortunately there is no longer any way to determine the total number of users that have ever installed an application on Facebook and as such it will no longer be possible to do an effective comparison of what sites are more effective based on public data.

All we have left to go on is the last total install data that Adonomics provides on their site. According to Adonomics the top MySpace application has over 6.7 million installs whereas the top application on Facebook has more than 46 million. This is the last we’ll ever know about the top number of users a Facebook application has but it’s clear that MySpace is still a fraction of Facebook when it comes to application installs.

How about when it comes to Facebook monetization? According to Alley Insider, Offerpal Media (who is also a sponsor of Social Ad Summit) has been paying developers around $75 per 1,000 daily active users on MySpace and Facebook and $150-$200 for “higher engagement” applications. MySpace is generating about the same amount. So how much does this break down to for CPMs?

No idea because there is no measure of what “high engagement” amounts to on Facebook or MySpace. Both sites are known for having an extremely high number of pageviews and as such this could amount to $0.75 or $75 CPMs. Chances are good that it’s much closer to the former estimate. While some developers are rumored to be generating over $1 million a month on Facebook, the majority are not generating that much off of a single application.

It’s great to see that applications across multiple platforms are monetizing equally, but overall the industry needs to figure out a way to increase the overall CPMs.